18-letter words containing o, h, a
- logarithmus dualis — (mathematics) (ld) Latin for logarithm base two. More commonly written as "log" with a subscript "2". Roughly the number of bits required to represent an integer.
- logical shift left — logical shift
- lonely hearts club — a club for people who are trying to find a lover or a friend
- look the other way — look in the opposite direction
- louisiana purchase — a treaty signed with France in 1803 by which the U.S. purchased for $15,000,000 the land extending from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.
- lower klamath lake — See under Klamath Lakes.
- lower palaeolithic — the earliest of the three sections of the Palaeolithic, beginning about 3 million years ago and ending about 70 000 bc with the emergence of Neanderthal man
- lubber grasshopper — plains grasshopper.
- magic switch story — Some years ago, I was snooping around in the cabinets that housed the MIT AI Lab's PDP-10, and noticed a little switch glued to the frame of one cabinet. It was obviously a homebrew job, added by one of the lab's hardware hackers (no-one knows who). You don't touch an unknown switch on a computer without knowing what it does, because you might crash the computer. The switch was labelled in a most unhelpful way. It had two positions, and scrawled in pencil on the metal switch body were the words "magic" and "more magic". The switch was in the "more magic" position. I called another hacker over to look at it. He had never seen the switch before either. Closer examination revealed that the switch had only one wire running to it! The other end of the wire did disappear into the maze of wires inside the computer, but it's a basic fact of electricity that a switch can't do anything unless there are two wires connected to it. This switch had a wire connected on one side and no wire on its other side. It was clear that this switch was someone's idea of a silly joke. Convinced by our reasoning that the switch was inoperative, we flipped it. The computer instantly crashed. Imagine our utter astonishment. We wrote it off as coincidence, but nevertheless restored the switch to the "more magic" position before reviving the computer. A year later, I told this story to yet another hacker, David Moon as I recall. He clearly doubted my sanity, or suspected me of a supernatural belief in the power of this switch, or perhaps thought I was fooling him with a bogus saga. To prove it to him, I showed him the very switch, still glued to the cabinet frame with only one wire connected to it, still in the "more magic" position. We scrutinized the switch and its lone connection, and found that the other end of the wire, though connected to the computer wiring, was connected to a ground pin. That clearly made the switch doubly useless: not only was it electrically nonoperative, but it was connected to a place that couldn't affect anything anyway. So we flipped the switch. The computer promptly crashed. This time we ran for Richard Greenblatt, a long-time MIT hacker, who was close at hand. He had never noticed the switch before, either. He inspected it, concluded it was useless, got some diagonal cutters and diked it out. We then revived the computer and it has run fine ever since. We still don't know how the switch crashed the machine. There is a theory that some circuit near the ground pin was marginal, and flipping the switch changed the electrical capacitance enough to upset the circuit as millionth-of-a-second pulses went through it. But we'll never know for sure; all we can really say is that the switch was magic. I still have that switch in my basement. Maybe I'm silly, but I usually keep it set on "more magic".
- magnetorheological — (physics) describing a substance whose rheological properties are modified by a magnetic field.
- make a meal of sth — If you think someone is taking more time and energy to do something than is necessary, you can say that they are making a meal of it.
- make a night of it — to cause an activity to last a night
- make short work of — exertion or effort directed to produce or accomplish something; labor; toil.
- make sth one's own — If you make something your own, you become involved in it in such a way that people think of it as being related only to you or belonging only to you, rather than to anyone else.
- malicious mischief — willful destruction of personal property motivated by ill will or resentment toward its owner or possessor.
- marine archaeology — the branch of archaeology that deals with the recovery of ancient objects found beneath the sea, as shipwrecks or remains from submerged islands, and with the techniques of underwater exploration, excavation, and retrieval.
- maternity hospital — birthing facility
- mathematical error — a mistake in a mathematical calculation, etc
- mathematical logic — symbolic logic.
- mathematical model — a representation of a system, process, etc, in mathematical terms
- maximum likelihood — greatest probability
- median lethal dose — the quantity of a lethal substance, as a poison or pathogen, or of ionizing radiation that will kill 50 percent of the organisms subjected to it in a specified time period. Symbol: LD 5 0.
- medium of exchange — anything generally accepted as representing a standard of value and exchangeable for goods or services.
- menthol cigarettes — cigarettes that are flavoured with menthol
- merchant of venice — a comedy (1596?) by Shakespeare.
- mergui archipelago — a group of over 200 islands in the Andaman Sea, off the Tenasserim coast of S Myanmar: mountainous and forested
- metamorphic facies — Geology. a group of metamorphic rock units characterized by particular mineralogic associations.
- methylcyclohexanol — a colorless, aromatic, viscous liquid mixture, chiefly of the ortho and para forms of CH 3 C 6 H 1 0 OH, derived from cresol by hydrogenation: used chiefly as a solvent for rubber, cellulose, esters, and phenols.
- microsoft exchange — (messaging) Microsoft's messaging and enterprise collaboration server. Exchange's primary role is as an electronic mail message store but it can also store calendars, task lists, contact details, and other data.
- middle paleolithic — See under Paleolithic.
- middle-of-the-road — favoring, following, or characterized by an intermediate position between two extremes, especially in politics; moderate.
- minister of health — a person appointed to head the government department of health
- moccasin telegraph — the transmission of rumour or secret information; the grapevine
- modular arithmetic — arithmetic in which numbers that are congruent modulo a given number are treated as the same. Compare congruence (def 2), modulo, modulus (def 2b).
- mohammed ibn-kasim — flourished early 8th century a.d, Muslim conqueror of the Sind region in India.
- monographic series — a series of monographs issued in uniform style or format and related by subject or by issuing agency.
- monophosphorylated — (biochemistry) phosphorylated with a single unit of phosphoric acid.
- monophthongization — to change into or pronounce as a monophthong.
- monte carlo method — a technique for numerically approximating the solution of a mathematical problem by studying the distribution of some random variable, often generated by a computer.
- morphine addiction — the fact or condition of being addicted to morphine
- moscow art theater — a Russian theatrical company founded in 1898 principally by Konstantin Stanislavski and famous for its naturalistic acting.
- mount saint helens — a city in Merseyside, in NW England, near Liverpool.
- move the goalposts — to change the aims of an activity to ensure the desired results
- movers and shakers — a person or thing that moves.
- mozambique channel — a channel in SE Africa, between Mozambique and Madagascar. 950 miles (1530 km) long; 250–550 miles (400–885 km) wide.
- much of a muchness — very similar
- mucopolysaccharide — (formerly) glycosaminoglycan.
- muscular dystrophy — a hereditary disease characterized by gradual wasting of the muscles with replacement by scar tissue and fat, sometimes also affecting the heart.
- nailed to the wall — [like a trophy] Said of a bug finally eliminated after protracted, and even heroic, effort.
- natural philosophy — natural science.